The simplest and most accessible tool for non-programmers to create a network diagram is probably NodeXL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com/), which is a free plug-in to Excel 2007. I've just started playing around with this and it is pretty neat. What's really nice about it is that it works off of a tool that many people are already familiar with (Excel) and can take advantage of all of Excel's capabilities. Plus you can see the data in the spreadsheet right next to the graph -- click on a node in the graph and the spreadsheet highlights the row with the data on that node, and vice versa, click on the node data in the spreadsheet and the node and its links are highlighted in the graph. This tool should allow the original requestor to color links different ways based on the type of relationship, and then filter to see subsets of those relationships (e.g., just "works for: or "donated money to").
The University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab has links to a bunch of freely available graph visualization tools they've developed (including NodeXL): http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/graphvis/ A couple of free web-based options are Many Eyes (http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/), which definitely does network diagrams (although I'm not sure how pretty they are), and Tableau Public (http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/), which may not do graphs, but can certainly do some really neat things with data analysis. However, I believe both of these options force you to make your raw data public as well (or at least what's needed to create the visualization), which may or may not be what they're looking for. The non-free version of Tableau doesn't have that requirement. I don't believe there's a commercial version of Many Eyes yet (although I'm sure IBM would be happy to sell you something if you asked). Brent ________________________________ From: Stephen Guerin <step...@sfcomplex.org> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Sent: Mon, July 12, 2010 4:18:13 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How do you auto-create a network diagram? For opensource graph visualization, you might check out: http://gephi.org/ FWIW, Josh and I have been building up a tool we're internally calling "EventFlow" that builds up temporal graphs from standard data. Here's a couple videos that show the tool as we're describing it to our collaborators in the UK: http://redfish.com/SFComplex/projects/UKNHSShropshire.html The user can input multiple spreadsheets or tables of two types: entities and events. Entities you can think of as nouns in a system and might be what actually flows through the system. In the case of a healthcare the entities might be patients, doctors, or medications. The events bind the nouns together with a start and end timestamp. In healthcare, we are using insurance billing data that has a particular patient mapped to a doctor, clinic, service and medication. We're also using performance data for the events. In education, the entities would be students, teachers, classrooms and events would be the transcripts binding a student to a teacher, classroom, subject and performance grade. EventFlow is not yet in a shrink-wrapped form but maybe after a couple more projects with it.... -S _____________________________________________________________ step...@sfcomplex.org (m) 505-216-6226 (o) 505-995-0206 sfcomplex.org | simtable.com | ambientpixel.com | redfish.com On Jul 12, 2010, at 7:29 AM, Tom Johnson wrote: > Any FRIAM-ers have insights to this interesting query? > > -tom johnson > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Dan T Keating <keati...@washpost.com> > Date: Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 6:41 AM > Subject: Re: [NICAR-L] How do you auto-create a network diagram? > To: nica...@po.missouri.edu > > > > The data structure described here looks like Semantic Web, an attempt to > define >relationships that will allow creation of automatic relationships and links >that >would not otherwise be apparent. We know in math that if a = b and b > c then >a >> c, but seeing that kind of relationship across data at different websites is >not easy. Once data is in the Resource Descriptor Formt (RDF) format > Object ==> relationship ==> Fact > like > Bill ==> lives on ==> Main St > and > Main St ==> is in ==> Neverland > then tools can start to find patterns in the data. There's a db query > languary >for it SPARQL. > > I had read some on Semantic Web a couple years ago and seeing the data in > this >pattern made me wonder if there are more useful tools for digesting it. But >zipping around the (old fashioned, non-semantic) web has not revealed much >more >than theoretical discussions. Maybe someone has put out a good tool for >representing data prepared in this format, but I'm not seeing it right now. > > The most comprensible links I'm seeing right now are from Joshua Tauberer, > the >guy behind govtrack.us. His blogs on the topic are at > http://razor.occams.info/blog/category/semantic-web/ > _________________________________ > Dan Keating > Graphics Editor/Data, The Washington Post > (202) 334-5047, keati...@washpost.com > > > > "Skelton, Chad (Vancouver Sun)" <cskel...@vancouversun.com> > 07/09/2010 06:29 PM > > Please respond to > Discussion Forum <nica...@po.missouri.edu> > > To > nica...@po.missouri.edu > cc > Subject > [NICAR-L] How do you auto-create a network diagram? > > > > > > Hi everyone, > > So a colleague of mine has some data showing the inter-locking relationships >between various people and companies. The data is set up in a spreadsheet kind >of like this > > Name Relationship To > John Smith Works For Tim Jones > Tim Jones Donated Money to ABC Inc. > ABC Inc. Employs John Smith > ABC Inc. Hired John Smith > > She'll looking for a way to map all these relationships to try to get a sense >of how these spheres of influence overlap. I know I've seen network diagrams >like this before -- different points with lines between them, with text along >the lines showing the relationship between the two points. I even remember >seeing them in a course I took that dealt with RDFa syntax. I'm assuming there >must be tools out there that can create simple diagrams from data kind of like >my colleague's. > > Any tips on what tools we could use to make this work? Those that are free >and/or web based would be best. :) Thanks! > > > Chad Skelton, Reporter > The Vancouver Sun > cskel...@vancouversun.com > Phone: 604-605-2892 > Fax: 604-605-2323 > > Check out my blogs: > vancouversun.com/parenting/ > vancouversun.com/papertrail/ > > Follow me at twitter.com/chadskelton and twitter.com/curiousdad > > ==================================================================== To >unsubscribe from NICAR-L, please send "unsubscribe NICAR-L" in the body of an >e-mail message to "lists...@lists.missouri.edu". Please e-mail >listmas...@ire.org if you need help or have questions. >==================================================================== > > ==================================================================== To >unsubscribe from NICAR-L, please send "unsubscribe NICAR-L" in the body of an >e-mail message to "lists...@lists.missouri.edu". Please e-mail >listmas...@ire.org if you need help or have questions. >==================================================================== > > > > > --========================================== > J. T. Johnson > Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA > www.analyticjournalism.com > 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) > http://www.jtjohnson.com t...@jtjohnson.com > > "Be Your Own Publisher" > http://indiepubwest.com > ========================================== > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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